Administration: Agencies pushing forward on open data

Dec. 10, 2013 - 06:00AM
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Agencies are making progress in opening their data to the public and potential developers, according to top administration officials.

Nick Sinai, federal deputy chief technology officer, and Haley Van Dyck, senior adviser to the federal chief information officer, said in Dec. 9 blog post agencies have built new websites and offered new developer tools to make their data more accessible.

Agencies were required to develop data inventories, publish public data listings and develop new feedback mechanisms under an executive order released May 9.

Examples of agency efforts to open up their data include:

■ The Energy Department offering a new suite of application programming interfaces to allow developers access into solar energy and utility rate data and others.

■ The Veterans Affairs Department launch of its open data website, which provides visitors with tools to better understand and navigate hundreds of data sets and highlights the most popular.

■ The Agriculture Department’s new tools that allow developers to build applications around its Farmers Market Directory and its agricultural statistics.

“While there is still much more work to do, we are excited to see the great progress being made by Federal agencies to unleash the power of open data,” they said.